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EC happy for Avnet to gobble down Magirus

Competition authorities not concerned about resulting mega Euro distie

The European Commission has given the green light to Avnet's proposed acquisition of Germany-based pan-European distributor Magirus.

The bid, for an undisclosed sum, was tabled in July but the regulators wanted to cast an eye over the deal to ascertain whether it would strangle competition.

The EC said it had examined data storage wholesaling and server distribution in a number of member countries including the UK, the Netherlands and Austria.

"The Commission's investigation showed that the merged entity would continue to face competitive constraint from numerous competitors including internationally active distributors such as Arrow, Ingram Micro and Tech Data, as well as smaller distributors," the EC said.

The fact that some vendors bypass distributors to supply larger and highly accredited resellers directly also contributed to the Commission's decision, it said.

Stuttgart-based Magirus already offloaded its $500m enterprise hardware business to Avnet in 2007 but the remaining Magirus business includes vendors Cisco, Dell, EMC, VCE and VMware.

In calendar 2011 privately held Magirus turned over $530m, up 20 per cent year-on-year but the bottom line was not disclosed.

The sale is due to be finalised in October now that Avnet has the blessing of the EC. ®

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